The present invention relates 3D pointing devices, as well as systems and methods which include 3D pointing devices.
Technologies associated with the communication of information have evolved rapidly over the last several decades. Television, cellular telephony, the Internet and optical communication techniques (to name just a few things) combine to inundate consumers with available information and entertainment options. Taking television as an example, the last three decades have seen the introduction of cable television service, satellite television service, pay-per-view movies and video-on-demand. Whereas television viewers of the 1960s could typically receive perhaps four or five over-the-air TV channels on their television sets, today's TV watchers have the opportunity to select from hundreds and eventually thousands of channels of shows and information. Video-on-demand technology takes this breadth of content choice even further, providing the potential for in-home selection from tens of thousands of movie titles.
The technological ability to provide so much information and content to end users provides both opportunities and challenges to system designers and service providers. One challenge is that while end users typically prefer having more choices rather than fewer, this preference is counterweighted by their desire that the selection process be both fast and simple. Unfortunately, the development of the systems and interfaces by which end users access media items has resulted in selection processes which are neither fast nor simple. Consider again the example of television programs. When television was in its infancy, determining which program to watch was a relatively simple process primarily due to the small number of choices. One would consult a printed guide, which was formatted, for example, as series of columns and rows that showed the correspondence between (1) nearby television channels, (2) programs being transmitted on those channels and (3) date and time. The television was tuned to the desired channel by adjusting a tuner knob and the viewer watched the selected program. Later, remote control devices were introduced that permitted viewers to tune the television from a distance. This addition to the user-television interface created the phenomenon known as “channel surfing” whereby a viewer could rapidly view short segments being broadcast on a number of channels to quickly learn what programs were available at any given time.
Despite the fact that the number of channels and amount of viewable content has dramatically increased, the generally available user interface, control device options and frameworks for televisions have not changed much over the last 20-30 years. Grid-based electronic program guides and the multiple button remote control with up/down/right/left navigation is still the most prevalent channel/content selection mechanism. The reaction of those who design and implement the TV user interface to the increase in available media content has been a straightforward extension of the existing selection procedures and interface objects. Thus, the number of rows in the electronic program guides has been increased to accommodate more channels. The number of buttons on the remote control devices has been increased to support additional functionality and content handling, e.g., as shown in FIG. 1. However, this approach has significantly increased both the time required for a viewer to review the available information and the complexity of actions required to implement a selection. Arguably, the cumbersome nature of the existing interface has hampered commercial implementation of some services, e.g., video-on-demand, since consumers are resistant to new services that will add complexity to an interface that they view as already too slow and complex.
In addition to increases in bandwidth and content, the user interface bottleneck problem is being exacerbated by the growth of Internet-delivered content, where the standard navigation methodology is search. As Internet-delivered content migrates to the television, there is a growing need to allow users to type in alpha-numeric information to search for specific content, or content with specific characteristics (e.g., movies with Tom Hanks). Current methodologies for entering text in television interfaces are extremely slow and cumbersome, requiring users to use up/down/right/left keys to navigate around an on-screen keyboard. Others simply use wireless computer keyboards to enter text on television, which is not only physically awkward to use in a living room setting, but also creates the perception that functional computing technology—which represents “work” to most users—is now invading the entertainment sanctuary.
A relatively new category of remote control devices includes 3D pointing devices. The phrase “3D pointing” is used in this specification to refer to the ability of an input device to move in three (or more) dimensions in the air, e.g., in front of a display screen, and the corresponding ability of the user interface to translate those motions into user interface commands, e.g., movement of a cursor on the display screen. The transfer of data between the 3D pointing device and another device may be performed wirelessly or via a wire connecting the 3D pointing device to another device. Thus “3D pointing” differs from, for example, conventional computer mouse pointing techniques which use a 2-dimensional planar surface, e.g., a desk surface or mousepad, as a proxy surface from which relative movement of the mouse is translated into cursor movement on the computer display screen.
An example of a 3D pointing device is found in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/119,683, filed on May 2, 2005, entitled “Free Space Pointing Devices and Methods”, the disclosure of which is incorporated here by reference and which is hereafter referred to as the “'683 application”. Therein, an exemplary 3D pointing device includes two buttons and a scroll wheel as input mechanisms in addition to at least one motion sensor. However, future applications which receive input from 3D pointing devices may benefit from other/additional types of input mechanisms.